


De Profundis

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Heavy Drinking, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos and Grimaud:  in that infamous cellar.  That's all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Profundis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arithanas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/gifts).



> You deserve this and more for being a lovely human being!

_“‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I want my valet returned to me fully armed.’"_

***

With the door shut behind the shaken figure of Grimaud and rebarricaded, Athos leaned against the heavy wooden frame and sank down onto the cold, damp steps. He shut his eyes, attempting to collect his wits.

A gentle knock sounded upon the door above his head, followed by a timorous voice, “What now, Monsieur?”

“Get lost! Go about your business, you scoundrels!” Athos shouted and slammed his fist against the wood behind him, for emphasis.

In the tenebrous darkness of the cellar before him, there sounded the dull thud of a body slamming against obstacles, followed by the sound of heavy objects knocked over to the ground. Athos laughed.

“That better not have been wine, Grimaud. I intend to drink this entire cellar dry before they carry me out of here.” Dead or alive, he thought. If he was going to go, he was going out in a blaze of outrageous glory, and stupendously intoxicated. Bacchus himself would look upon him in wonder.

“Are you wounded?” Athos asked, moving through the cellar, his eyes reaccustomed to the darkness now that the door had shut again. He could just barely make out his lackey’s figure, rising itself on wobbly legs from a pile of wine casks. “You’re going to have to speak, I’m afraid, I can’t see your gestures very well.”

His hand shot out in time to cup Grimaud’s face mid-nod.

“Show me where,” Athos said quietly, deft hands traveling over the servant’s body, looking for breaches. The lackey’s hands flew up and quickly touched his master’s fingers, guiding them to the wounds that were bothering him most.

“I’ll live,” he added, gasping at the squeeze of Athos’ fingers around his flesh.

“You stupid, careless factotum,” Athos pressed his forehead to the other man’s. “What am I going to do if you get yourself killed, huh? Who else is going to tolerate me and my foul temper?”

Grimaud shrugged and Athos felt the corners of his lackey’s mouth twitch into a smile under the questing tips of his fingers.

“Hm? Nothing else to say for yourself? The one time I give you permission to speak?”

“Thank you for asking for me.”

Athos waved him away, dismissively. “Trifles,” he muttered. “You’re going to help me drink this miserable wretch of an innkeeper out of business. That Cardinal’s dog!”

Grimaud blinked. His own eyes getting used to seeing in the dark. His master’s contours, like a ravening beast, paced back and forth before him. He’d seen Athos in his cups before, but never like this, for never had a man drunk with such singular purpose.

“Well? This wine won’t drink itself.”

Athos tipped another bottle over into his mouth, his throat muscles working to swallow everything down as if he had been wandering the desert for years. Grimaud sank down against the wall of casks and opened one of the spigots, filling his hand with the pungent wine. It burned his parched lips.

***

Days later, his wounds were beginning to heal, and his eyes were accustomed to seeing in the cellar as if he himself had become a rodent denizen of the subterranean space. His master laughed and threw something in his lap.

“I found their sausages,” Athos declared, proudly brandishing the meat product as if it were a sword.

Grimaud saw no reason to resist and gnawed at the tip with relish. “Good,” he nodded with approbation.

“Goes nicely with this vintage,” Athos concurred, slumping onto the ground next to him.

“What is it?”

“Hm… Burgundian?”

“Really?”

“You question my immaculate taste buds, swine?”

Grimaud shook his head but Athos laughed and slung his arm over his shoulder. Things had been extremely blurry for several days now. And yet, there was only one thing Athos was clear on: he didn’t want to leave. Out there was… what? Duty? If he still had a job. Friendship? If he still had friends. Here, in the dark cellar, he had all a man could want: food, booze, and companionship of someone who thought he’d hung the moon.

“Are your wounds healed?”

Grimaud nodded again.

“I am very drunk right now, Grimaud,” Athos pointed out the painfully obvious, “So I’m going to ask you something, and if you’re not equally drunk, you don’t have to feel compelled to answer.” The kid (he’d never really gotten over thinking of his servant as that kid he’d taken with him from La Fère) blinked at him like an owl. In fact, through the fog of the wine, he appeared extremely bird like, and Athos idly wondered whether his hair would bristle like feathers if touched. “All right. So. I think we can both agree, I’ve been pretty horrible to you for the past few years. Why do you stay with me?”

Like a blind man making his way through the world, Grimaud felt for his master’s hand and brought it to his own lips, placing a reverent and chaste kiss between two bruised knuckles.

“It isn’t you who hurts me,” he whispered into the skin of Athos’ hand, “It is your pain.”

Their heads were so close, they were practically sharing breath. Athos extended his finger and brushed it along the seam of Grimaud’s mouth.

“Eat your sausage, boy,” he said and rolled away, into a different part of the cellar, no doubt to dig up more hidden treasures.

***

Athos had just finished raving and raging against the innkeeper’s wife, and even more so against the innkeeper himself, who had been such a coward that he had sent a _woman_ to negotiate on his behalf. Athos had half a mind to open the door and abduct her into the cellar too, if only to keep her from the likes of her husband. But then, that was neither here nor there, and he was exorbitantly drunk. The empty bottles towered in the corner over the remaining filled bottles, dwarfing them with their rapidly increasing numbers.

 _No_ , he wasn’t going to let anyone in. And _No_ , he wasn’t going to let any of the wine out either! They could use their own tears as spices, for all he cared! As for the olive oil, well, he was sure he’d find better use for it than whatever Madame Treacherous Dog would have done with it.

“Can you believe the audacity of it, M. Grimaud?” Athos slurred. “To have the temerity to ask me, their besieged, to surrender my olive oil to them?”

Grimaud’s giggles were interrupted by a hiccup.

“I hadn’t even realized we had olive oil down here,” Athos mused, “And here I thought I’d turned over every leaf.”

Grimaud scrambled up to his feet, navigating among empty bottles and casks as if on a minefield.

“I saw it,” he cast about in the darkness, “Ah! Yes. Here it is.”

“Bring it over here. Let’s see this olive oil.”

“Think it goes well with sausages, Master?”

Athos laughed and spoke, his voice dripping with filth. “I think it goes very well with sausages, Grimaud. Very well indeed.”

***

_He was soaked front and back in a thick liquid that the host recognized as his best olive oil._

_\- The Three Musketeers,_ Ch. XXVII:  The Wife of Athos


End file.
